Instant messages chronicles three months in the friendship of Maddie, Zoe, and Angela. Zoe, the most cautious and conservative, finds herself verging on a relationship with her 24-year-old teacher. Maddie, the tough grump, develops a friendship with popular Jana, much to the chagrin of Zoe and Angela. Spontaneous, outgoing Angela is attracted to one boy after another. Lib notes: Plenty of use of "sh*t" and an occasional "f***". I thought the format would be annoying but the depth of the characters comes through.

I really liked this book! I've read the book multiple times before and it is very relate-able for young girls. This book can also serve as an educational purpose. It can used to teach young girls to be aware of the dangerous that could possibly be lurking online and the benefits of true friendship. The writing is well organized and engaging. It keeps the interest geared towards the book for the young readers. The events are believable and are highly relate-able for teenage girls. The characters grows throughout the book and show how much one can change once the story is over. ( )

Not a good book at all, definitely one that I would not recommend to boys, and only to very immature girls. However, the reason that I did read it was to gauge its' raunchiness after all of the censorship claims I've heard of this book. Most of the truly offensive stuff comes at the beginning, but then becomes fairly mild with conversations similar to what many girls have. There definitely is some redeeming value to the book that transcend its' bad reputation, mainly in how online conversation can be both harmful and beneficial. ( )

Wikipedia in English (1)

Audacious author Lauren Myracle accomplishes something of a literary miracle in her second young-adult novel, ttyl (Internet instant messaging shorthand for "talk to you later"), as she crafts an epistolary novel entirely out of IM transcripts between three high-school girls.

Far from being precious, the format proves perfect for accurately capturing the sweet histrionics and intimate intricacies of teenage girls. Grownups (and even teenage boys) might feel as if they've intercepted a raw feed from Girl Secret Headquarters, as the book's three protagonists--identified by their screen names "SnowAngel," "zoegirl," and "mad maddie"--tough their way through a rough-and-tumble time in high school. Conversations range from the predictable (clothes, the delicate high-school popularity ecosystem, boys, boys in French class, boys in Old Navy commercials, etc.) to the the jarringly explicit (the girls discuss female ejaculation: "some girls really do, tho. i read it in our bodies, ourselves") and the unintentionally hilarious (Maddie's IM reduction of the Christian poem "Footprints"--"oh, no, my son. no, no, no. i was carrying u, don't u c?").

But Myracle's triumph in ttyl comes in leveraging the language-stretching idiom of e-mail, text messaging, and IM. Reaching to express themselves, the girls communicate almost as much through punctuation and syntactical quirks as with words: "SnowAngel: 'cuz--drumroll, please--ROB TYLER is in my french class!!! *breathes deeply, with hand to throbbing bosom* on friday we have to do "une dialogue" together. i get to ask for a bite of his hot dog.'"

Myracle already proved her command of teenage girl-ness with Kissing Kate, but the self-imposed convention of ttyl allows a subtlety that is even more brilliant. Parents might like reading the book just to quantify how out of touch they are, but teens will love the winning, satisfyingly dramatic tale of this tumultuous trio. (Ages 13 to 17) --Paul Hughes